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As I ponder this question, infinite space reveals itself once more. For as hard as I look, I cannot find myself. I can only find thoughts, memories, fears, beliefs and concepts that constantly arise and cease. But whoever I am does not arise or cease. I am who I have always been. Different thoughts and a new body, but I am who I am. And as my mind stills, consciousness expands without limit. There is a deep sense that, indeed, it has no limit. It, too, is infinite, vibrantly alive space.
To pay profound attention to reality is prayer, because to enter the depths of this moment is to encounter God. There is always only now. It is the only place that God can be found. Our minds find paying full attention to now very difficult. This is because our minds live in time. Our thoughts are preoccupied with past and future, and the present moment is missed. This means that the reality of God is missed. We live in a dream; contemplation is waking up.
In talking to God, we also nurture the ability to listen. A full mind cannot listen. Listening In relationship we have to learn to listen as well as to talk. Listening is more difficult. It is more difficult because much of the time we are not really listening to the other, but to ourselves. As the other person talks we listen not to them, but to our minds.
To listen to God, we first of all have to stop listening to ourselves. We have to offer our minds to God that our thoughts may be shaped, colored and illumined by His spirit. Listening does not involve abandoning thought, but requires that our thinking is placed on the altar of God. The traditional Christian word for the practice of listening to God is “meditation”.
The mind does not want to still. It is now getting light and the cup of coffee has been finished. There is a temptation to pick up the cup once more just in case there are a few drops left – anything to put off the effort of bringing stillness to the mind. Thought clamours. From the moment of awakening, the mind has been convinced there is a problem that requires urgent attention. It does not know what the problem is, but it must exist. Since that moment the mind has accelerated, as it has begun the process of obsessing with the challenges of the day ahead. Perhaps one of them is “the” problem. The contemplative knows that unless the commitment to stilling is made as soon as possible, the mind will begin to resemble wild horses racing around a paddock. It is better to calm the horses now, rather than later when it will be much more difficult.
Immediately the turbulence of the mind diminishes. It was so simple. Yet why was the resistance so great?
Where once there was resistance to entering the stillness, there is now resistance to leaving it. Contemplation, however, is not about escaping from the world; it is about nurturing a new relationship with life, so that one can truly love God and one’s neighbor.
As we rest for a while in the stillness, in that space in which thoughts are born, live and die, strangely there is still a profound sense of being “someone”, of being a unique individual. However, no words will suffice to contain this experience of personhood. There is just an experience of intensely alive “presence”. This is who we truly are. We are the child of the light and the stone; the fruit of that relationship.
A contemplative mind, being not scattered, fragmented or lost in unreality, is therefore an ordered mind. This is not a manufactured order imposed by strength of will, but an order that naturally arises from being connected with reality. It is an order rooted in simplicity, for the real is simple. It is an order rooted in acceptance, for to deny what is real is madness. And from this state of acceptance arises the wisdom not to manufacture unnecessary choice.
But, strangely, the power of the tug can most clearly be seen in “little” things. I have begun to notice the tug of dread when there is some empty time ahead of me. I do not know what to do next. This can happen in the morning upon awakening when I have a clear day. I have noticed how my mind immediately begins to accelerate as it searches for ways to fill the time. The sense of relief when it thinks of something to do is palpable. I have noticed it also when I come home from work in the evening. I have two hours until there is something on the television that I might want to watch – my mind begins to feel very strange. The tug to the next moment dominates our lives. It is what cuts us off from the fulness of life. Its power comes from its hidden nature. When we become still – usually first outwardly, then inwardly – its hiding place is revealed. In the light of awareness it will fight energetically for a while, but will always eventually succumb.
AI Summary
From the Bottom of the Pond by Simon Small presents key insights from the Christian Mysticism tradition. The 10 passages above capture the essential teachings.
Core Themes:
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Key Passages: Highlights 1, 3, and 10 are particularly representative.
This entry was generated from Readwise highlights. Expand with additional context as appropriate.